Friday, December 05, 2008

´Metal Gear Solid 4´ no longer PS3 exclusive?, part VIII

Hideo Kojima is hinting at a new installment in the ´Metal Gear´ series, possibly on Xbox360, via this teaser site. It contains a flash animation that apparently features the Xbox360's ring of light, pictured below the screengrab for comparison:

Alternatively, the small caps letter ´i´ could hint at a whole number of other platforms: the iPhone, the DSi and the Wii. The exclamation mark is part of the ´Metal Gear Acid´ logo, but could also reference the MGS series symbol for being discovered by the enemy. A reference to ´Metal Gear Acid´ is unlikely since the directory the teaser animation is in reads ´MGST´. This strongly suggests a ´Metal Gear Solid´ title, perhaps with a subtitle beginning with the letter ´T´.

Speaking to Eurogamer in late August, the series' creator Hideo Kojima tried to dispel the rumours about an Xbox360 version and wished people would stop asking.

Because MGS4 was optimised for the PS3 it is probably not possible. But, you know, what kind of disturbs me sometimes, because a lot of people ask me about this PS3/360 question, is that it's not about the hardware - I want people to look at the game itself. Sometimes I even feel like it should be on a PC so that people don't ask me about hardware and platforms.

Still, Kojima himself hinted at an Xbox360 version. Many industry experts, myself included, have taken the non-exclusivity for granted. The PlayStation3's poor hardware sales and the game's staggering budget simply do not make an unlimited exclusivity a viable option from an economic point of view. And there were plenty of indicators that an Xbox360 version was already in the works. Here is another updated rundown of all the other hints and rumours regarding this debate from day one.

However, on the NeoGAF forums, former EGM editor Che Chou seeks to squash the rumours.

It's simply a rumor that Konami higher-ups are pressuring Kojima Productions to consider making MGS4 a multiplatform game because production costs on the game are unsurprisingly high and only getting higher. With PS3 install base numbers not looking all that rosy due to console cost and manufacturing problems, Konami is scared they can't recoup their investment on only 1 platform alone.

Speaking to GamePro, Hideo Kojima himself says that ´MGS4 is actually for the PS3 only,´ adding a significant ´so far´.

If I say too much, Mr. Kutaragi might get really upset. I think that the PS3 is difficult to work with, but so was the PS2. (...)

I do have strong interest in creating something for the Xbox 360. In the US and Europe, it is selling, and I think it will sell a lot this year as well. I'm a fan of Gears of War as well, it's very interesting.

Frankly speaking, I want to create something on the PC. It's a multi-platform [format]. I've been regularly studying work on the PC anyways, and I want to provide something as a world-wide platform because of the consequences with timing on the PlayStation platforms, MGS4 is actually for the PS3 only so far.

The VG Resource Center claims to have received a statement by an anonymous source within Konami.

Yes, in fact, we are working on putting Metal Gear Solid 4 on the Xbox 360 and PC, which should both come out roughly 6 months after the PS3 release. However, we've been working with Microsoft so the 360 and PC versions will both take advantage of Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live, with such features as achievements and the ability for 360 and PC owners to play against each other in multiplayer.

An alleged Microsoft employee writing for Destructoid confirms that the game will be released on Xbox360 no more than one year after the PlayStation3 version. The article reads:

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will not be a PS3 exclusive after all. It has been confirmed that it will make its way to the Xbox 360 in 2008.

There is no true date set for the release at this point, but November of 2008 has been mentioned. This is not set in stone as Konami is working with Microsoft to bring the date forward as much as possible. (...) The announcement hasn't been officially made yet, but the source works for Konami, and I know for a fact that MS has been negotiating this for months.

A Reuters article cites Kazumi Kitaue, head of Konami's North American and European operations speaking about a multi-platform MGS4.

Kitaue said Konami may need to expand the target hardware for its blockbuster fighting game Metal Gear Solid, which has so far been developed for Sony's PlayStation machines, to other consoles in the future to recoup development costs.

"Since Metal Gear Solid was born for the PlayStation, we would like to keep it a PlayStation game. But we might have to take some steps," Kitaue said. (...)

Only days later, the Official Xbox Magazine claims a "bankable source" confirmed that the game would be coming to Xbox360 "a few months" after the PS3 version.

Soon after, music and videogame retailer HMV lists a PS3 and an Xbox360 version on its website, detailing 2008 release dates of April 18 and September 26, respectively, later claiming an "admin error".

Xbox site XboxFamily claimed to have been told about an Xbox360 version of ´Metal Gear Solid 4´ being in the works, citing an inside source with the game´s publisher.

Speaking to a Konami rep at an undisclosed distribution meeting, I was told, after a lot of nagging, that yes indeed MGS was in development for the 360. The rep stated that Metal Gear Solid will be released for the Xbox 360 between 12 to 14 months after the PS3 version hits shelves. This is not a rumor.

Only some months before, in a Reuters article published in late November, the game´s assistant producer Ryan Payton said the following about the publisher´s high expectations for the game.

Payton said the new "Metal Gear Solid" needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production, but that may be a tough mark to hit given sluggish PS3 sales.

EDIT Here are some interesting theories by other media outlets, starting with the brand new Offworld, Boing Boing's gaming site.

Back in July, as many may have forgot, a French games blog suggested a rumor that Kojima Productions might have a December Surprise up its sleeve. December 12th, they said, six months after the release of the game (that length of time, players will note, fitting in nicely with the fiction of ´Metal Gear Solid 4´) might trigger an in-game event.

Since the colors are electric green on black, and since the symbol to the right looks an awful lot like the symbol in the middle of the power button on the face of the 360, it's not hard to see why.

On the other hand, it's actually just the universal power symbol, also known as IEC 5009 (which refers to "power" but alternatively to "standby" or both "power/standby") as well as IEEE 1621, where it refers explicitly to the "power control user interface." It's also on Apple laptops, Windows-based laptops, desktops, various other electronic devices, and if you look at the touch button on your PS3 -- yep, it's there too. That it's green may have some significance...or it may be a red herring. Hard to say.

EDIT Here is another interesting theory, courtesy of TVG, focussing on the inverted exclamation mark.

TVG has its own theory: MGS4 was released globally on the 12th of June (12/06). Invert that date like the exclamation point, and you get '06/12' – which is tomorrow.

So, is Konami finally confirming tomorrow that MGS4 will be heading to Microsoft as the last great third-party PlayStation exclusive to go multi-platform?

KONAMI ANNOUNCES KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS TEAM FOR XBOX 360Two Blockbuster Titles Already Under Development

OSAKA – Konami Digital Entertainment – Japan, a division of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., today announced a new, exclusive for the Xbox 360 gameconsole, development team will be formed inside Konami Corporation. On January 11, 2007, Konami Corporation merged and consolidated its group companies. Accordingly, former Konami Computer Entertainment Japan East Team, lead by creator Hideo Kojima (Corporate Officer, Konami Corporation), embarks on a new era as "Kojima X Productions" inside Konami Corporation.

The newly formed Kojima "X" Productions is proud to announce that Metal Gear Solid: Triology is currently in development for the XBOX®360 ( X360 ) next-generation computer entertainment system from Microsoft ( MS ). Metal Gear Solid: Trilogy will be a remake of three Hideo Kojima's masterpieces. Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. The Metal Gear Solid series, is highly acclaimed worldwide, with its breathtaking graphics, profound stories, intricate human drama, original game design and superlative gameplay. Also under development is one other exciting game in the Metal Gear series -- Metal Gear Solid: Fluid Ac!d for the Microsoft Zune media player.

Updates regarding Kojima Productions will be posted periodically on the following website: Kojima Productions Official Homepage: http://www.konami.jp/kojima_pro/.

About Konami CorporationKonami Corporation is a leading developer, publisher and manufacturer of electronic entertainment properties, specializing in the home video game market. Konami Corporation's action and adventure titles include the popular franchises Metal Gear Solid®, Silent Hill® and Castlevania®, among other top sellers. The latest information about Konami can be found on the Web at www.konami.com. Konami Corporation is a publicly traded company based in Tokyo, Japan with subsidiary offices, Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. in the US and Konami of Europe in Frankfurt, Germany. Konami Corporation, the parent company of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. is traded in the United States on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KNM. Details of the products published by Konami Digital Entertainment - America can be found at www.konami.com/gs.

See it says "a next metal gear is." in which does not say solid. plus with next in the line meaning there next installment not a port. My opinion....it could be MGA for wii or DSi.Dsi + stylus (!) = DSi power symbol. (which also is green at full power.)

As far as Conduit is concerned the reason I haven't written it off just yet is because the devs stressed numerous times that they are going to listen to the feedback they get and try to incorporate as much of it as they can if it's for the better.....and since the last time they showed us new material was early oktober where I voiced my concerns about some of the design issues of the game I'm positive that they might actually be bsy addressing that at the moment.....many people complained about the uninspired look of the game so I hope they get it right before release....They have kept a low profile since early october and for good reason I assume...Conduit needs better art first and foremost... the tech powering it is okay.....I wish them best luck ......I'd love to see it evolve to what it intents to be.....I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Concerning Monster Hunter 3:

LOL. Phoney. It most definitly doesn't look like a PS2 game to begin with. The engine is quite powerful actually. The engie boasts detailed high poly dragons and geometry with solid quality texures and generally very good texture design IMO

Let's face it, Monster Hunter 3 in its TGS 08 form would never be possible on Playstation2. It only shows how narrow minded you are if you ague with me over that. Monster Hunter 3 is WAAY beyond what a playstation 2 game could handle.

The vast scope of the environments coupled with the monsters and characters on screen at once you must be kidding me konyphoney.

The effects also happen to look quite good even in their unfinished form...laughable Klowny....simply laughable....

Monster Hunter is quite impressive for a Wii game klowny

Also note Red Steel was a rushed game.....Ubi Paris have talented artists ....it didn't look bad.....they just have to nail the controlls this time around and it might end up an instant classic

and Tenchu 4 looks really cool to me.....I don't get what you don't like about it??

And Demon Blade is a hommage to old school 2D games with a very vivid art style....it simply looks great imo

Cursed Mountain sounds pretty ambitious from what I've heard.

I know you secretly want all those games I mentioned Klowny.......I think you are the biggest Nintendo fan around ;-)))

I prefer Louis Armstrong to Winton Marsalis.Even though Winton has cutting edge recording equipment and uses modern digital analog recording software,Louis is a better musician and basically created Jazz music.Everything since then is a copy/tribute to his innovation.

"This is a straight series installment that concentrates on the core experience while playing around with some of the Wii hardware’s possibilities. Most notably, it’s quite beautiful. Capcom may have leaped to the forefront of Wii development if the long draw distances and lighting are anything to go by, despite the company’s insistence that the demo featured incomplete visuals.

The processing power isn’t just for the pretty plants, either, but goes towards creating a stronger sense of wildlife in motion as you move around the world, watching creatures chase and feed on one another"

"High Voltage Studios has been very vocal lately in decrying what it sees as the technical under-achievements of other developers’ work on Wii. The Conduit is therefore the studio’s line in the sand, an intended new benchmark for Wii’s graphical capabilities.

And it looks pretty good. NOT QUITE XBOX GOOD, perhaps, but there’s a smattering of bump-mapping here, a lash of bloom there, rippling and reflective water, shadows, depth-of-field, sprays of particles and ragdoll physics to which Wii owners won’t be accustomed, all running at a smooth framerate.

And, admirably, the techniques are subtly implemented, a point that prevents The Conduit from feeling like little more than a tech demo. The payoff, however, is that the demo we’ve played takes place mainly in identically styled dark, dingy corridors, occasionally lined with crates and boxes for cover and taking a right-angle turn now and then. "

"But as close as the scheme can feel to a mouse and keyboard at its best, at its worst it’s more awkward than it needs to be. The main problem is that accessing such controls as the minus button (reload) and D-pad (to switch weapons or zoom in) tends to throw out your aim. THE ISSUE IS WITH THE REMOTE'S LESS- THAN-ERGONOMIC BUTTON LAYOUT FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN A and B, AND IT'S ONE THAT MAKES YOU QUESTION Wii’s FUNDAMENTAL APPROPRIATNESS FOR GAMES THAT REQUIRE CONTROLS AS COMPLEX AS THOSE NEEDED FOR A MODERN FPS."

See it says "a next metal gear is." in which does not say solid. plus with next in the line meaning there next installment not a port. My opinion....it could be MGA for wii or DSi.Dsi + stylus (!) = DSi power symbol. (which also is green at full power.)

A ´Metal Gear Solid´ could be "a next Metal Gear". And bear in mind that the directory is called ´MGST´. Of course, that's no proof of a ´Metal Gear Solid´ title. But to me that's far more likely.

I think what's pretty amazing about Monster Hunter 3s gfx is that it doesn't seem to sacrifice on either the characters or the environment like is the case in many games. Both aspects look equally detailed.

It reminds me of the Resi 4 approach where everything is in good balance. But Monster Hunter takes it one step further with its vastly bigger environments and enemies.

Resi 4 already had fairly detailed enemies that did justice to the gorgeous environments and Monster Hunter seems to build on that with Wiis additional power.

Furthermore, I think it's good for developers to maximize their engines on Wii as it has quite a few years left before the next system shows up.

I don't think Ninty will rush with Wii's successor and simply make it more powerful like the competition did this gen. Actually, I even recall someone from Nintendo stating that they won't release a new console unless they have a really great new idea...so I think we should prepare ourself for at least another 3-4 years Wii lifespan - enough time for devs to dig deep and get the most out of the system for us to have some more eye candy.

Wow COD WAW for Wii seems to be quite good if reader reviews are any indication.......it's already considered the best shooter on Wii ...and while it doesn't look as good as the other versions people say it's a looker for Wii nonetheless...

I think I'll give it a shot.....haven't played a fps since Black PS2

sounds like a solid third party game that takes advantage of the systems capabilities for once

because I loved the first one and like to see a sequel even if it's very unlikely.....

Concerning COD5....I am gonna pre order it today.....I think IGN might have been a bit hard on it with their 8.0 rating.........other critics and readers rated it an average 8.5 eventhough the controlls might not be as responsive as MOH2.......if you are a Wii owner who happens to like FPS this is a good chance for us to prove to 3rd parties that we buy their games if they show promise

COD Wii needs to sell at least one million copies.....

@anonymous

"I prefer Louis Armstrong to Winton Marsalis.Even though Winton has cutting edge recording equipment and uses modern digital analog recording software,Louis is a better musician and basically created Jazz music.Everything since then is a copy/tribute to his innovation."

"Best on my list are The Dig, Indy & The Fate of Atlantis, MI2, Colonels Bequest and PQ2/PQ3. Oh and Grim Fandango was great too."

yeah all that stuff is classic ......man the Wii would be the perfect fit for LA adventueres.......but I guess it doesn't sell nowadays because people don't have the patience for this type of game unless of course we all buy sam and max....

Oh they do it have it on DS and PSP but you need to have homebrew running and running SCUMM engine. I have a bit of a play but I need the pc to play these games, cant stand the resolution and everything else.

having spent about 4 hours with COD waw Wii yesterday I with mixed feeling as far as the visuals are concerned....

the pros:

- Features some of the biggest landscapes in a shooter I have seen to date with many objects filling the environmets

- Some of the effects like fire and smoke look quite good. The fire looks as good as the fire in Resi 4.

- It runs quite smoothly

The cons:

-all the charactermodels are awful: they look very PS2ish its almost as if they were copy pasted from a ps2 COD with very washed out low rez textures and generally low polygon counts!

-the majority of the environment textures are pretty low rez and washed out.

- The water is a flat ugly texture.

-It's clear that the engine wasn't built with the Wii in mind.

- There is simply not enough Wii specific optimization.

- It seems as tough they simpy scaled the Next gen engine down till it ran on Wii

To sum up my feelings u:

Basically Call Of Duty Wii looks like a PS2 game with vastly bigger environments , more stuff going on and more objects on screen at once than the PS2 could ever hope to handle plus with some up to date effects like fire and smoke added into the mix that the ps2 probably also wouldn't be able to handle.

But all the models and textures are merly ps 2 quality just that there is a lot more of everything on screen at once which isn't neccessarily a bad thing.

With that said Cod isn't a bad game. The controlls are fine. The game is pretty intense. It's just that the graphics are hardly optimized for Wii. They just don't lookk right. Theres too much lowrezness all over the place, too many wahed out textures too much aliasing and on top of that the character models are a joke.

Here are the questions I sent to the guy from youtube who asked for questions for his interview with the conduit team :

my Conduit questions: 1. On various message boards people voiced their concerns regarding the art direction of Conduit. One often hears statements like it's "too generic and uninspired" compared to other games in the genre like Half Life and Prime for example. So my question would be whether the art direction will get an overhaul leading up to launch or are the designs on enemies and environments pretty much final?

2. I figure the aliens are some sort of insect race featuring thin legs etc. The Conduit aliens look quite similiar to the space pirates from Prime. Is is just a coincidence ? WiIl there also be "greys" and other alien races in the game?

3. I recently read an Edge Online Conduit preview where they wrote something along the lines of Conduit looks good but "NOT QUITE XBOX GOOD". They obviously meant "not quite Xbox 1 good". What would your response be to that? Does Conduit not even match Xbox 1 visuals? I'm asking this since you stated that your endeavour was to match 360 and PS3 type graphics in the first place.

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